4D police headquarters gets bombardment and siege from Karon Hylton protesters
Video-bombardment of 4D with projectiles and fireworks 1 min 21 sec
The 28th of October saw a second night of protest and heavy direct action at MPD's 4D headquarters for Karon Hylton. As riot cops blocked night culminated in a massive fireworks blast against the building. An attempt to kettle the crowd failed, cops ended up just pushing everyone south on Ga Ave.
By the end of the night, 8 arrests had been reported. What did NOT happen was a successful kettle followed by a mass arrest. It was felt inside the original position in front of 4D (position surrounded by bike cops) that the cops simply were not up to containing everyone if it came to a need to break out.
This was the second night in a row of protests against MPD, the 4D substation, and Officer Sutton, the cop who chased Karon Hylton to his death for nothing more than riding an electric rental scooter on the sidewalk and without a helmet. The initial report was for a "rider without a helmet" and nothing more. Plenty of people showed up with helmets on (black ones for battle) at the protests and direct actions resulting from this senseless murder by police.
As the initial march arrived at 4D, protesters and neighborhood residents engaged the police station with projectiles as soon as they were within range. Projectiles showered in, and police station windows were broken for the second night in a row. Bike cops set up behind protesters blocking every exit and entrance route, leaving only narrow gaps for anyone daring enter or leave. This is in violation of both the Pershing Park mass arrest settlement and the earlier DC Council legislation, which forbid "encircling protesters with police lines." Some of the protesters filtered out, only to set up new positions on the other side of the police lines of nose to tail bikes.
At this point, half the cops on the north side potential kettle line had to shift their focus from the protesters on the inside to the additional protesters on the outside. A number of minor incidents ensured but not arrests seen by this author. For about two hours, the scene stabilized in place. At one point, Karon Hylton's father took up the megaphone on Ga Ave, on the street opposite 4D's doors. Seemingly in response to this an additional line of riot cops swarmed out of 4D and marched in formation to that side of the street. Shortly therafter protesters opened up with the fireworks.
These fireworks served as very effective artillery support. At one point a police helicopter showed up, but the pilot quickly thought better of flying into an area containing active fireworks displays and flew away. While the police attacked almost immediately after the big blast at the building, more fireworks were set off in the path of the advancing cops, and cops who were supposed to use the S side bike line as the lid of the kettle may have thought better of it. A serious attempt at a kettle may have been planned at the Walgreens, with transport vans showing up and a report of a "serious run at protesters." In the end however, all these cops simply could not achieve the level of street domination it would have taken to load so many furious, angry, resisting protesters into arrest vans.
There were some exceptionally ugly incidents, notably cops pepper spraying into an occupied McDonald's while children were inside. This sort of thing could have gotten even worse, but soon things must have been diverting police attention to other parts of town. At nearly the same time as the kettle attempt and "McMace" incident, cops were reported blocking streets in Georgetown for unknown reasons. Possibly someone gave them something else to do just as things started looking dire on Georgia Ave? As the night went on, protesters managed to stay together even as cops pushed them farther and farther from 4D. A considerable amount of pepper spray, smoke and/or tear gas, and flashbang grenades were fired at protesters, but they stayed in the streets well past 1 AM. "Anoncat" reported on Twitter that 14 MPD officers were injured in the fighting.